Within the healthcare industry, infection control experts recognize the importance of preventing the spread of healthcare-acquired infections. To date many studies have been conducted in an effort to ascertain effective ways to reduce the occurrence of such infections, and the clear majority finds a thorough cleansing of one's hands as the single most important way to protect against the spread of healthcare-acquired infections. For this reason, many health care facilities have installed manual and battery powered automated dispensers to facilitate proper hand hygiene.
However, limitations exist with regard to these manual and automated dispensers. For instance, manual dispensers require users make physical contact with the dispenser. By requiring such physical conduct, the dispenser becomes a medium for transferring bacteria and disease to subsequent users. Automated dispensers have rectified this problem by eliminating the need for physical contact between users and a dispenser. As a result, automated dispensers reduce the potential for a user contracting a healthcare-acquired infection by eliminating the need for physical contact with dispensers. Turning again now to manual dispensers, it is well known that healthcare workers using such dispensers generally perform only a partial dispense. In other words, they fail to obtain the recommended dispensing volume of soap or alcohol making the hand cleansing less effective. Automated dispensers have again remedied this problem, as automated dispensers commonly utilize electrical motors capable of dispensing the appropriate volume of alcohol or soap for a given user. However, unlike manual dispensers, automated dispensers are often powered by standard batteries. As such, repeated use of automated dispensers results in a decrease in battery levels which has a direct effect on the efficiency of the electrical motor responsible for dispensing appropriate volumes of alcohol or soap.
While the discussion thus far has focused on manual and automated soap dispensers, the inadequacies stated above exist in manual and automated dispensers irrespective of whatever purpose they may serve. Even though automated dispensers are desirable in the sense that they require no physical contact between a user and the dispenser, they remain rather scarce in healthcare facilities due to their dependence on batteries as a source of power. Furthermore, from an economic viewpoint, the unavoidable costs associated with performing routine maintenance make automated dispensers an impractical candidate for widespread implementation. What is needed, therefore, is an automated dispenser which is no longer dependent on batteries as a power supply.